Flos Capricorno Lamp Vintage Design Afra & Tobia Scarpa 1970s

Vintage floor lamp in white lacquered metal whose light intensity can be adjusted by opening or closing the frame. It bears the manufacturer's mark. Designer: Tobia Scarpa creates the first works at the Venini glassworks. 1957 - begins working with Afra Bianchin. 1959/60 - Tobia Scarpa designs the first design project in the Furniture course held by Franco Albini (Pigreco armchair). 1959/63 - Collaborates with his father Carlo, professor at I.U.A.V. (University Institute of Architecture in Venice) on architectural design projects. 1969 - They graduate in architecture from the Faculty of Venice, but already have a consolidated professional activity behind them. 1960 - Actively participate in the founding of the company Flos. 1960/63 - Collaborate with Dino Gavina as designers and create the sofa 'Bastian' and the bed 'Vanessa'. 1963 - Begins collaboration with the Meda company. 1964 - Collaborate with the company Stildomus whose owner is Aldo Bartolomeo. They meet Luciano Benetton for whom they will design the first factory (the knitwear factory), the house, and the chain of stores, protagonist of a new approach to managing production, distribution, and sales, thus taking care of the company's image. 1966 - They design for Eclisse and Vico Magistretti. 1981 - They design for Goppion. 1986 - They collaborate with Casas. 1987 - They collaborate with Meritalia. 1989 - They design for IB Office.
Discover more about Tobia Scarpa with our insights:
FineArt: Two 'Soriana' Armchairs
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FineArt: Two-seat 'Soriana' Sofa
FineArt: Two 'Soriana' Armchairs
FineArt: 'Soriana' Two-seat Sofa
Soriana, the sofa with a complex image
(n.1935) , Afra Bianchin (1937 - 2011) was an Italian designer, architect and restorer.nAn image of 20th century Italian design and culture, together with her spouse.nThey began their collaboration in 1959, with the design of the armchair.nTheir activity contributed to the representation of Veneto and Lombardy.nThey won the “Compasso d'oro” award in 1970, establishing a professional link with Benetton.nThe Scarpas also designed numerous restorations in the Veneto region. (1937 - 2011) Brand/Manufacturer: At the origin of Flos there is above all a bright idea, the thought that from a light bulb, or rather from a new idea of how to design artificial light, objects suitable to change a little the way of life of Italians could be born: a population known to be very spoiled by being born, raised and living in a territory where at every step one stumbles upon something to do with art. At the end of the 1950s, a gentleman named Dino Gavina, a very individualistic man and almost obsessed with the idea that Italy had to be the new homeland of a new culture of furniture, after meeting the inventor and small producer from Merano Arturo Eisenkeil, set his mind that after having created many new pieces of furniture (with Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Ignazio Gardella, Carlo and Tobia Scarpa and other geniuses of Italian architecture), it was also time to create new lamps. The cocoon technique used by Eisenkeil, a resin sprayed on a metal frame, seemed perfect to start with: it was not about decorating a light bulb, but giving magic to the light coming from it by filtering through a nebulous but therefore fascinating material, like clouds are. Quickly many other beautiful and still very surprising techniques followed the cocoon technique for a country still so tied to old ideas of furnishing: so much so that, whether willing or not, already from its prehistory Flos (that is the company with the name invented by Pier Giacomo Castiglioni succeeding Eisenkeil) found itself in that interesting, sometimes uncomfortable position of those obliged to continuously produce inventive objects. In 1966 a new phase opened with the transition of the company from the artistic management of Dino Gavina to the more entrepreneurial one of Sergio Gandini. Already engaged since 1959 in furnishing with his wife Piera in the store Stile of Brescia (a space that is already a point of reference for many companies in the sector), when Flos moved to his city, to exploit the historic competence of what today would be called an industrial district for metalworking, Gandini was soon involved as a partner in the company by Gavina himself and Cesare Cassina. Afra and Tobia Scarpa and the Castiglioni brothers, from then on and for many years to come, were the creative soul of all Flos production. In the case of Flos the meeting with the two Castiglioni brothers is certainly fortunate, first, and then with only Achille, after the premature death of Pier Giacomo in 1968. Inventors more than architects, artists as well as designers, they are capable of assembling existing industrial components (as in the Toio, or the Mezzadro stool for Zanotta) or invented ones (as in the Arco, the Splugen, the Black and White or the Parentesi, conceived in 1969 with Pio Manzù) until creating new kinds of artificial lighting, with an immediacy of form and meaning difficult to find in other designers. Even more exemplary is the harmony created between them and Sergio Gandini, when he called them to become co-responsible for all product choices. It is no longer just about creating an important object, a formal sign of great mastery, but designing its entire life cycle in production and on the market, up to the final use. The beautiful utopia of the object that necessarily meets the public's taste only by the skill of the designer is overcome by a concrete realism, which makes Gandini, Castiglioni, and Scarpa work together on problems such as packaging, graphics, storage, distribution, with the same commitment dedicated to the study of light or the product material. The first foreign company was opened in Germany in 1971, while 1973 is the year of the expansion of the plant (from 800 to 5400 sqm) and the acquisition of Arteluce: the one-man company of Gino Sarfatti, one of the greatest Italian talents in lighting design, author since the 40s of excellent pieces but then still tied to a product and supply dimension largely limited. With the collaboration of Paolo Rizzatto, then a novice designer, and Marco Pezzolo at the management, Gandini began to reschedule the catalog: he kept a few original iconic Sarfatti pieces, generating over time with designers such as King Miranda and Arnaldi, Ezio Didone, Marc Sadler, Matteo Thun, Rizzatto himself, a series of new products very successful and important commercially. The real strategic change, however, happened with the arrival of Philippe Starck, who started collaboration with Arà (1988), a curious horn-adjustable lamp reflecting the fairytale imagery of an author launched towards extreme popularity. Piero Gandini had already sensed the commercial possibilities of Starck's work and willingly accepted when he, now very established as an interior designer, proposed to mass-produce a small plastic object imagined for a New York hotel: Miss Sissi, a kind of icon of the lamp shade, 'What everybody thinks in their unconscious a lamp is,' 'Quello che tutti nel loro incoscio pensano come una lampada,' Starck would say in a conference years later. Sergio Gandini was initially somewhat doubtful, but in 1991 the project went into production and it was an incredible success. In the 90s the slow decline of the incandescent lamp continued, giving way to the invasion of energy-saving ones, while the real revolution began to take shape with LEDs.